


Enter Sandman

by RadiatorfromSpace



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Thor (Movies), Thor - All Media Types
Genre: Bold Flirtation in a Tattoo Parlor and Various Morbid Locales, Drama, Dream Invasion, Dub-Con/Non-Con Elements, Humor, Kink for Being Romantically Propositioned with Death, M/M, Pining, Porn tags to follow with further updates, Romance, Tattoo Artist!Thor, Tattoo Kink, Teratophilia, Vampires, monster kink, vampire kink, vampire!Loki
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-05-30
Updated: 2020-05-30
Packaged: 2021-03-03 03:01:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,890
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24447736
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RadiatorfromSpace/pseuds/RadiatorfromSpace
Summary: Mr. Tall, Dark, & Vampiric was making sultryYield to Meeyes at Thor throughout their session—while Thor tried to keep some blood flow above his belt. Vampire Sex God probably wouldn’t sleep with him if he fucked up his tattoo.Or Tattoo Artist!Thor invites a vampire not into his house—but into his dreams.Read the tags.
Relationships: Loki/Thor (Marvel)
Comments: 10
Kudos: 28





	Enter Sandman

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for your help, Woollylichen! <3

Eyes shut, headphones on, Thor bit his lip for one of the greatest pleasures.  
  
_She’s in love with herself_ —the depth of his soft, echoing growls… Teeth biting lips in the blackness. _She likes the dark_. Oh, bitch, he does, yeah… _On her milk-white neck, the Devil’s mark!_ The enthralling bass’s deep thrumming, echoing below his belt. The Music of the Season…  
  
_Now it’s all Hallows Eve, the moon is full._ An eager twitching behind his zip; his pants were tightening. _But will she trick or treat?_ Pleaseplease… _I bet she will!_  
  
A bold rip of guitar punched up the intensity and the singer wailed like a ghoul: _She’s got a date at midnight with Nosferatu_ —mmmm… _Oh baby, Lilly Munster ain’t got nothing on you!_ He sank against the wall, slowly ground his hips up against daydreams and air.  
  
Now a beauteous croon; Peter Steele’s voice was voluptuous, right in his ear.  
  
_Her perfume smells like…burning leaves_ —Thor gripped both headphones tight. His mouth opened wide, his tongue slid out as if to taste it. He was _With_ It now—the world gone, airy devils come to court.  
  
_Every day…is Halloween…_  
  
He moaned—a lush, sumptuous sound ending in an intoxicated whimper.  
  
“DON’T have sex in my tattoo parlor!” Sif snapped as she strode past his design-covered cubicle.  
  
Thor jerked back to reality with one twitching eyelid and a hand reaching instinctively for his steaming Certified Fall Slut pumpkin spice latte. He pushed back his headphones.  
  


“Just one time,” he reminded her.  
  


“Two years ago.”  
  


_“Five.”  
  
_

“Don’t do it.”  
  


“C’mon, Sif-tiff.”  
  


“How hard is it to just _not_?”  
  


“EASY for 99 out of 100 times!” He snickered.  
  


“A ‘once’ that lives in infamy. Like your love life in your twenties,” she muttered.  
  


“I swore off my type years ago. Ready to forgive and forget?”  
  


“Not nearly long enough.”  
  


“He disagreed.”  
  


There was no reply, only the soft, metallic jingle and pad of Sif’s boots moving toward her office at the back.  
  


Thor smirked. “I CAN STILL CALL HIM TO BACK ME UP ON THAT!”  
  


_“Not in my parlor he can’t!”  
  
_

Thor snickered, Sif’s office door clicked shut, and another normal day at Runes began.  
  


Thor took another appreciative sip of the hot, gratuitously seasonal beverage warming his hands, with no shame whatsoever, and even a lingering tingle in his pants. Autumn Anything gave him life; Victorian elegance, Spooky Crap, even the cheesy, kitschy stuff made him so happy, and especially dark, handsome, alternative, mysterious, and (specifically) vampiric-looking men.

  
What did such men _do_ for him? Ask anyone who’d merely been _acquainted_ with Thor in his twenties (and four local newspapers).  
  
An abridged description of Thor’s type: a tall, dark, alternative drink of _Not Good for Him._  
  


Yep, his life was _so_ much better now that he’d very maturely sworn them off! Thor had his shit together: he kept the toxic crap to a minimum, he had a job he loved and a great flow of clients, his best friends were always around him, money was good, and he was healthy. Plus his pet-sitting side-hustle was thriving (and full of fluffy toe-beans!) and he had a work schedule to die for—as well as the muscles to show for it. Health insurance would have been great, but at least his godmother was a GP and she helped him out.  
  
The only… _less than happy_ thing was his love life ever since he enacted a ban on His Type.  
  


There was no trouble finding attractive dudes for hookups and casual dating, and he’d tried on a bunch of types, some creative, some more traditional—once a human manifestation of the Ideal Corporate Law Attorney and wasn’t that _weird_. They were all attractive, stable, healthy, and… _fine_.  
  
They were fine. It was fine. _(Everything’s fine, Mom.)_  
  
**B L A H**  
  
It felt good but not quite “Right.” Always some quiet dissatisfaction in the pit of his whatever. They lacked the emotional intensity that engaged him and the ability to keep him surprised, intrigued, and on his toes. But that Intensity characteristically came with darker issues (which wasn’t the problem) and a dangerously high casualty count in their personal wars against those demons (this was the problem). In Thor’s twenties, he’d found those guys interesting and addictive _for_ their issues and the derelict management skills rather than because they were otherwise interesting or accomplished.  
  
Thor’s Real problem was probably his struggle to set boundaries between his attitude of “everyone’s got issues so it’s okay as long as there’s no Hell-bound skydiving” and _“Actual Tandem Hell-bound Skydiving.”_  
  
_Was there really no middle-ground?_  
  
But he wasn’t putting himself in that state again just to tease it apart. Without the assortment of things Thor wanted, his present love life reminded him of the sensation of being covered from head to foot in a completely soaked weighted blanket that he was reluctantly resigned to leave over his airholes.  
  
A comment of his mother’s floated into mind—from two Thanksgivings ago, and three years after the ban’s enactment: _“Should I…should I be happy or disappointed you’re not bringing your boyfriends home to meet us anymore?”_  
  


Thor rolled his eyes and tried to stuff it in the back of his head, but it was always harder during autumn when all the Spoopy shit was everywhere in town, social media, and _even more than usual_ of it strutting around this funky, alternative part of town.  
  


He glanced out through his “office” window, the one that looked out on the reception area and the huge windows onto the main thoroughfare of the downtown area. He did so just as a fairly _His Type_ dude swaggered by, and from the depths of Thor’s brain came the tiniest of _‘hngh’_ s.  
  


Can’t have everything in life! He wisely turned his gaze to his appointment book and began prepping for his next client.

  
~  
  
After sending another bandaged client off at about two that afternoon, Thor stretched his legs in the reception area. He was looking (literally) out the window, (metaphorically) at a sizable block of free time before his next appointment, and considering killing an hour or so of it at his favorite gym nearby. His eyes followed the foot traffic outside as he mused and put his hair up in a fresh bun. His fingers ran over the handful of mini-braids he’d put in it that morning (because what was life without style?).  
  
It was nearing his sixth anniversary of being “clean” from his type, and he should really think of a little something to celebrate. It was no small feat with his appearance and in his line of work no less. He kept watching the people outside as he idled. One day he’d find a cool dude who would be inspiring, weird, surprising, intense—oh _wow_ it just got hella overcast hella quickly—and handsome, and he was doing sooo well, it wasn’t even shitty anymore, and his anniversary was really just around the corner—  
  
And then he just about _CRIED._

  
For. There. He. _Was._ Cutting a line through the crowd towards Runes was the possessor of the complete set of proportions, colors, textures, bearing, and style that briefly turned the total sum of neurological activity in Thor’s brain to a single blast of a confetti cannon. Thor tipped his forehead against the window and had a little Private Moment there with the normally comforting steam of his latte wafting over his face.  
  
“Thor? Are you—?” Sif began.  
  
“Five minutes,” he grunted. Sif needed no more questions and returned to the reception desk.  
  
An abundance of butterflies. He was lightheaded to the point of dizziness, his body shook with suddenly All Of The Adrenaline, his skin tingled nearly everywhere, and his knees were abruptly jelly. **_Vampire Sex God wasn’t even in the building yet.  
_**  
He had the Look: dark, mysterious, alluring, and openly Potentially (read: Probably) Dangerous. **_Hngh!_** He even had metal boot tips on his _winklepickers!_ Oh, Thor could go to jail for a murder he didn’t commit for this bitch; his face alone was gorgeous even to people who hated all forms of goth and alt, and Sex God _knew it_. And then he also had the Nice shoulders with that sleek, sharp figure—the build of an **Assassin** ; sleekly masculine, and secretly yet certifiably powerful.

  
This dude gave Thor flutters _in his_ _finger joints_. What the fuck was that even?

  
Then Thor noticed his hands.

_  
o h h h h h._  
  
  


He didn’t care if this guy was hella freaky—if he had a kink for fucking _raisins_ — _he’d do it_ **.** _Fcu k_ , Odin, let him be single and if not single then just make him a faithless cheat!

  
**TL,DR:** Thor was presently a muscular pudding. Heaven forbid he should be Thor’s type inside and out.

 _  
_ Thor took back control and forced himself to breathe again, blink again, until his eyes lost their glaze—all parts back to work. _Stop panting and chill! Just don’t make an ass of yourself and you’ll have Vampire Sex God dick in your mouth tonight._ Thor shook himself and smoothed his shirt. Yum…

  
Vampire Sex God was almost at the door.

  
Ohgodohgodoh ** _dog_** he was _so hot_!

  
Vampire Sex God entered the shop.  
  
All around Him, the vivid artwork faded; the lights dimmed wherever He wasn’t and concentrated wherever He _was_! The shadows thickened, deepened, clustered covetously around His edges as He strode on air, his startlingly lovely visage bearing the most exquisite culprits: the deathly pallor, the clear complexion, the rare combination of hair and eye color, the classist contours of his bone structure—beauteous, refined cheekbones perched high above the famished hollows of his cheekflesh, and the comely shadow sculpted and stretching from beneath the cheek to chin like a clean scar of the barrier between the classes. The aura of a past life as a panther. It **hurt** to look at him yet the ferocity of his beauty compelled his gaze to remain, to rest forever upon Him alone, soothing away context and consequence while his retinas burned to nothing.  
  
To body and brain, the sight of him was a physical blow, an experience of many sudden and simultaneous immensities and urgencies: shock, white light, disbelief, suspension in mid-air, enchantment, exhilaration, adrenaline, Wonder—a mortal threat fantastically _and_ dreadfully out of place. A fire of suspicious origin.  
  


.  
.  
.  
.  
.  
_  
Sweet mustache, Batman!_  
  
Thor blinked, and his eyes opened upon the wisps of ink, the edges, the hint of tattoos peaking out of his neckline—a playful slip of tongue across a candlelit dinner in Morocco—but, still disoriented, his gaze bounced back up to the…underground Art Gallery and Shrine that was the Sex God’s “Neck Situation.” Er, it was…a play of three acts.  
  
I: The thick torc perched heavily upon his collarbones. The bright silver was folded on one half to mimic waving fur before terminating in the wolf’s head in whose slavering jaws was trapped a smoky topaz; the other half was wrought with painstaking detail of delicately _veined_ scales in green and blue enamel, with the serpent’s head studded with cabochon gemstones, purely because the master artisan who made it _fucking could_.  
  
II: The tether and stake. As if the weighty First was at risk of running away, the finest chains emerged from the torc body at even intervals and, their length slack, each hung from their corresponding anchors positioned above: small, shining dermal studs punched through the skin at the same height around his neck. A beautiful presentation of grotesque implications. **  
  
III:** The finale laid, or the story truly began, just below those dermal studs: a line of red, raised tissue running across his neck like a thin ribbon—like the memory of a wound, like the squelching echo of the sudden, metallic _slice._  
  
Then Vampire Sex God strode over to him. He said, “ _Hey_.”

  
Thor said, “ _Hneff._ ”

  
~  
  
Thor grabbed a binder of sample designs and extended his hand for Vampire Sex God to shake. He took it in a crushing grip— _ooh_ , he was _strong_! Thrilling visions raced into Thor’s mind--of being chased through the forest or an abandoned mansion and exquisitely captured for passionate, adrenaline-fueled sex. HNNNNNNGH—gods, one or both of them had better prep first because when there was sexy chasing and roughhousing involved, he needed it balls-deep and right. Fucking. _THEN._  
  
Thor was already envisioning them falling to the ground, the rough and tussle of determined, single-minded hands removing only the necessary clothing because waiting was no option, and then the hot, delicious sinking into that stretch and heat with no condom between them as the Sex God forced their mouths together and never let him up for air.  
  
...What a fine day to wear his tightest jeans. Thor lowered the binder.  
  
“I’m Thor!”— _the right name!!!_ —“Welcome to Runes! There are many ways I can help you.” He winked at him.  
  
_Don’t have an appointment, don’t have an appointment, I will kill the bitch who—_  
  
“I think I—” began the Sex God.  
  
At that moment, Hogun was walking by and stopped dead in his tracks. Hogun, like all of Thor’s close friends, were so _selfishly_ There For Him on this, his weakness, so while Hogun gawked at Loki and Loki stared at Hogun, Thor glared Murder by Blood and _Fire_ at Hogun.  
  
A grim, shit-eating grin spread across Hogun’s face.  
  
“... _don’t_ have an appointment,” Sex God finished, his eyebrows soaring.  
  
This distracted Thor, who loved an expressive face— _so communicative! So rich! So penis! Oh brain, please shut up._  
  
Hogun leaned toward Thor and whispered: “Do you need me to take—”  
  
Thor shoved Hogun in the opposite direction. “I’ll take care of you,” Thor assured his walk-in as he So Not Sleazily slid his hand between Sex God’s shoulder blades AND DOWNWARD and turned him in the direction of his office. “I’m very happy to have you today. How do you feel about _undivided_ _attention?_ ”  
  
“It is often my favorite kind,” Sex God replied as Thor led him towards his chair.  
  
_He has nice vertebrae.  
_  
“So what in hell’s name do you do when you’re not getting it?” Thor asked casually.  
  
“When I’m not being a prick, I can be quite charismatic. I can even make people like me _so much_ , that they _all leave the room_.”  
  
“Do you pay them?! I bet you need a sturdy stick for that magic trick. Or a bodyguard to help you out…”  
  


That made the Sex God laugh. Thor grinned and playfully nudged his hip against Sex God’s, and the Sex God gave him a Look that wordlessly assured Thor of what his mental faculties could only interpret as ‘ _Suck Dick, Eat Ass, and Sell Drugs.’_  
  
**_Shut up,_** _brain._  
  
“So it must be a very _sharp_ stick!” Thor teased. “You caught me between bookings at one of the elite establishments! Let me hook you up with some of my award winning attention.” He was sliding his hand a little ways down Sex God’s back. “By the way, if you ever have fuzzballs or miniature dragons, here’s my card! I designed it myself. This side is my tattoo info, and when you flip it over…I’ve been in the pet sitting business for over a decade. That’s my personal cell.”  
  
Thor dug out his phone and went to Runes’ employee page in his browser and scrolled down. He shoved it in Loki’s face. “Recognize me?” Thor crooned.  
  
Thor’s employee pic showed him in a tight tank top with his tats on display and beaming at the camera while he cradled and let perch on his upper arms eight (8) bunny rabbits. The caption?  


“Beauty is in the eye of the Bunholder”

 _Obviously._  
  
Sex God’s bright eyes slid this way and that at some secret, flying, acrobatic joke as an evil, toothy grin— _oh,_ his eyes did the sexy-handsome crinkling thing when he grinned like that…  
  
_Hnnnngh_. Extra jelloid knees. One of which buckled, but Thor caught himself on the counter quickly enough to pretend it n e v e r h a p p e n e d.

  
“Bats,” Sex God proclaimed in a tone of voice that plainly suggested that he was playing the joke of his style, and that it might still be a factual statement.

  
Sex God’s grin and his voice were charming, _enchanting…_ And his lips. Moving. When he talked.

  
“Do you have any experience with those, Thor?”

  
“With lips?” Thor asked. “Do bats have lips?”

  
“Pardon?”

 _  
Shut up, brain, shut up!_  
  
Thor’s cheeks went hot, but he didn’t actually sweat it. People liked him imperfect.  
  
“I don’t think I got your name,” Thor said quickly.  
  
“Loki,” Vampire Sex God said, as if this information surprised no one on earth.

  
“Loki! A striking name for a striking man!” Loki only smirked and continued on happily with Thor’s hand pressed intimately against his back, so it was all good. “My studio is right in here. Let me get the door for you.” _Oh good, he was walking normally again! Yes, excellent job, jelly knees!_ **  
**  
Loki the Sex God followed him into his office and Reclined upon Thor’s chair. Thor took his wheelie chair, keeping the binder over his crotch.  
  
“So! What are you in the mood for today?” Thor asked with a cheeky wink. “Other than me!”  
  
“A variation on a theme,” Loki began...  
  
“Do tell!” _And put it in my mouth._  
  
“And I’m looking...for someone nonjudgmental…”  
  
“I’d call you a twenty. Gentle enough?”  
  
Loki smirked and unbuttoned his jacket. Thor’s eyes zeroed in on the revealed arm. The shirt was sleeveless, but he had one of Thor’s H.O.T. favorites: a gorgeous sleeve ending at the wrist.  
  
Sex God reached up and tied his hair back in a sleek, uncommon bun. His arm muscles flexed beneath the dark, dense designs of his sleeve in a way reminiscent of the powerful, sinuous muscles beneath a Burmese python’s scales—like he was inhuman, like he was Other, no, a demon; alongside this human anatomy lived a thrillingly unimaginable dark creature just underneath the skin…waiting to break free.  
  
So Thor’s Boner Level was now “Possessed.”  
  
The myriad details of him signaling a winsome potentiality for mutually orgasmic ferocity.  
  
_Get a griiip…_  
  
Alluring lethalities untold…  
  
**BAM!** Thor kicked a steel cabinet. The pain gave clarity. Fuck.  
  
Loki gaped at him. “Whatever in the world was that, Thor?”  
  
Thor forced a cheesy grin. “Cockroach,” he said, _Mmmostly_ keeping the pain out of his voice.  
  
Loki’s wide eyes narrowed to slits as he glared, cold and imperious, down at Thor.  
  
_Damn. Gotta save and lock it._  
  
In silence, Loki finished the bun and leaned conspiratorially towards Thor. “You know what I think?”  
  
“Tell me.”  
  
Loki pointed his finger at Thor’s face.  
  
“ _I think_ if you want to be trendy _yet_ certifiably calamitous at your ex’s wedding, you must arrive covered in horse entrails and blood. You know, for that perfect _wet_ look.”  
**  
** W h a t. **  
  
**Thor burst into cackles, actually falling off his rolling chair. What the fuck?! What the actual fuck! “I love the weird things you say!” he said when he could speak again.  
  
Loki smiled into his shrug. “Now! Is English your only language?”  
  
Thor blinked. “Yeah.”  
  
“Not even a little bilingual?”  
  
“Sadly no. Why?”  
  
Loki shrugged as though it was unimportant. “I’ll show you what I have in mind.”  
  
He took off his shirt.  
  
``  
  
“You are unreal,” Thor marveled from Cloud Nine.  
  
“Maybe he’s born with it,” Loki sang, “maybe it’s Virgin’s Blood!”  
  
He was being paid to ogle and flirt under the increasingly thin guise of “sharing” his body art with a fellow lover of body modification. It was a great excuse Thor used freely, but with Loki it was something perhaps spiritual that Loki could make contact with more than his physical matter. He traced the rim of sunlight outlining the clouds on Thor’s chest and his gaze tickled the backs of Thor’s lungs; his smile made Thor blush while trapping his soul beyond time and space. Or some other nonsense!  
  
“Aight, _I get it,_ Thunderboo,” Loki teased.  
  
“Aight, let me get _the_ _rings_ , Vamp Bae,” a melting, tingly Thor did **N** ot say.  
  
“Are these haikus?” Thor asked. He let his fingers linger on the one at the base of Loki’s neck, below his hair. This one was in Arabic and Thor loved the angles and curves of the text.  
  
“No, just...variations on a theme,” Loki answered. “I want another in a new language. I think it may be my last…”  
  
Momentarily distracted from lust, Thor’s brow furrowed. He placed his hand on Loki’s shoulder.  
  
“Why?”  
  
Loki shrugged but he released his bun to let his hair hide the Arabic lines Thor had loved so much. “Running out of space.”  
  
“Here,” Loki said, slipping a bit of paper into his hand. He lay down on the chair. “I want these lines. Not pure black, but deep gray. Same font, softer edges.”  
  
“Where do you want it?” _Baby…  
  
_“Riiight about...here.”  
  
While Thor applied the stencil to unmarked skin, they chatted. Sex God was creative and well-traveled—he’d studied language, storytelling, and music theory in school and spent years living as a modern-day bard in different countries to absorb their own conventions and add to his repertoire—and apparently free from the typical ball and chain of holding down one solid job to sustain himself. He’d collaborated with some of Thor’s favorite folk and metal bands; he’d been to dozens of countries; he’d even worked as a makeup artist on two of Thor’s favorite films.  
  


So the natural downside of this was that Thor had to divide his attention between doing a damn good job and restraining himself from throwing in a complimentary blowjob. His mouth was watering.  
  
The Dark, Mysterious, & Sex God-y looks he was throwing Thor weren’t helping. And when Thor was doing well at concentrating for too long, Loki would push the machine _away_ and talk to him some more, with heavy, unwavering eye-contact.  
  
Thor couldn’t even _remember_ what he’d asked him this time.  
  
“Well, by now I am fluent in twelve languages, Thunderboo. You cannot get around that if you need to learn their conventions in cultural context. In Gaelic, they always begin legends with ‘fado, fado,’ or ‘long, long ago’ but classical Sanskrit has elaborate formal conventions—a courtly literary form developed by over-leisured peoples, you know—which is _tremendously exciting_ when you look at both when they share so many cognates—” And then he went _on_. By the end he was gazing at Thor with eyes glittering, cheeks flushed, and chest heaving.  
  
_Just slap me in the face with it._ **  
  
**“But _we_ can start with ‘suivez moi,’” he murmured, readjusting his legs on the chair. He looked fast: good for chase and capture.  
  
Thor took a decisive swig of coffee and turned the machine back on.  
_  
No more words now._  
  
**``**  
  
Mug of Fall Slut Latte in hand, Thor led his bandaged Vampire Sex God out to the reception area and handed him his jacket.  
  
This was definitely infatuation, just a clusterfuck of brain chemicals and hormones and all that so he could just walk away if this wound up not being good for him—he knew that by now—but honestly, he was going to marry Loki.  
  
At the moment, the Thing at the top of that Everything Pile was still his dick in his mouth, but whatever; he was very partial to blowjobs.  
  
“You’re welcome. Welcome anywhere,” he said, and mumbled, “any _time_ ,” into his mug.  
  
Loki quirked a brow at him as he shrugged on his jacket. “Am I truly?”  
  
_In my chair, on the floor, in my bed, in your coff—in—bed, yes, bed, I meant **bed.** Yours because I already said mine—_

“Mmmhmm,” Thor hummed as he tried to wrangle his brain back into his skull.  
  
“I’ll hold you to that,” Loki murmured in a Sex God-y way. “Tonight.”  
  


_Hnnnghfuck._

  
Thor grinned from ear to ear and watched him disappear into the crowds on the street outside. He released a dreamy sigh and kept watch, part of him fantasizing Loki would rush back because he’d forgotten something, like _to snog Thor within an inch of his life_ , but minutes passed and it didn’t happen.  
  
_Love, be more cruel or so be kind…_

  
Thor practically floated back to his space. He refreshed his coffee on the way and sat in his chair, staring at nothing and sighing some more over the steam rising from his mug.

  
Sif came in and leaned against the doorframe. “So what intricate monstrosity did Porn Star want?”

  
“Huh?” Thor asked. _Intricate?_ He took a sip of his coffee. Dreamy-dream, sighy-sigh.

  
Sif rolled her eyes. “I should know better than to try to get actual words out of you right now. But what did some walk-in want that took four fucking hours?”

  
Thor blinked. “He was in here, like, thirty minutes.”

  
Then he checked the clock.

  
_What????_

  
When he looked back at Sif, her eyebrows were attempting to merge with her hairline. Then she snapped.

  
_“What did he give you?”_ she demanded. She sniffed the air for pot and fiercely glared around his area as she searched for signs of anything forbidden.

  
“I knew I should have checked on you when he closed the door. I should have known with all the—you two were fucking giggling and cackling non-stop…” She grabbed one of his latex gloves and his trash can and began riffling around, searching for condoms or paraphernalia. “I tell you every fucking day! Don’t have fucking sex in my shop!”  
  
Shock aside, Thor shook his head and slid back in his chair. Visions of Vampire Sex God easily re-inserted themselves into his head, which persuaded their case for his full attention much more effectively than Sif’s temper.  
  
_Arms. Sleeves and muscles._  
  
There was nothing to find anyway, they’d only…er, whatever they’d done was actually quite hazy. He was certain he’d been working on Sex God’s tattoo, but then why did Loki need two more sessions for such a simple design?  
  
_Back muscles. The contours._  
  
What had he been tattooing on him…? It was French. French something.  
  
_Dem abs and hipbones._  
  
Thor blew bubbles into his coffee.  
  
“Hogun and I rescheduled two of your appointments because of that guy…” Sif muttered.  
  
_Dat VVVVVVVV._  
  
Sif was going to be paranoid for a week now and the unexplained was eerie, but no matter. He had nothing to give a fuck about because he was seeing a Vampire Sex God tonight! _Hahahahaha, take that, world!  
  
_~  
  


By the time he left work, Thor was cozily aware he was a terrible, moony mess over the Sex God.

_  
IlovehimIlovehim—as long as he’s not my type, please gods…but until then, I love him._

  
Dreamy sigh, wistful gaze, blissed out grin, another sigh—even when he wasn’t awash in mental images. Just the knowledge that Loki existed. In his life. And had been flirting with him that day.

  
Back at his apartment, he took Maple and Periwinkle (the two dogs he was boarding at the moment) out for a walk and a cuddle and then fed them dinner. Periwinkle was a sedate, old corgi-German shepherd mix who knew the ways of the world, while Maple was thoroughly _un_ trained and full of love. Which she communicated chiefly through spit! But she was learning.  
  
He’d started getting his foot in the door with _exotic_ animals a couple years back. It was fairly slow-going but by now he ranged from competent with supervision to very comfortable with megabats (aka “Nocturnal Burritos”), rabbits (“Children of Heaven”), a porcupine (“LOVE SPIKES”), and two alligators (“Basking Shredder Bbies”) of different ages (“egg babbu” to “tub-sized precious”). He’d even helped a zookeeper buddy of his onsite habitats where he learned about caring for baby rhinos (“Overwhelming Nose Boops”). Maple here was the least of his adventures.  
  
Thor made himself some dinner, couldn’t muster an interest in the Netflix series he’d just been hooked on, and so returned to his much more important and productive daydreams while cuddling with the pups.

  
In his bedroom (without the dogs), he jerked himself off on memories, fantasies of being chased through a forest and being taken down for a good, animal fuck in the dirt, with the help of some good porn audio in the background and went to bed, still all tingly everywhere and consoling himself with the prospect of seeing Him again (hopefully!) soon to work on the next line of his tattoo.

 _  
Hnnngh,_ he looked _so sexy_ in all that ink… So—just— _ARGH_.  
  
~ **  
**  
Comfortably dozing, Thor rolled over and _plummeted through the air_ onto a fainting couch, within in a fainting room, inside a manse of great expanse which towered o’er the Plutonian shore.  
  
He leaped to his feet, eyes darting all around for signs of danger, but none appeared—he might almost judge himself alone were it not for the room’s unnatural degree of Presence, such Presence sufficient to convince one that the chamber itself was one great eye introspecting. But whatever the observing Manse’s opinion of him, would forever remain unknown.  
  
Thor took in the room—velvet wallpaper in deep mauve, elaborate crown molding, muntin bars on windows of both clear and stained glass, heavy curtains of damask—as he accustomed himself to the unnervingly palpable sensation of the Watcher’s gaze. Yet the Manse was a touch endearing; its interior decoration resembled a ransacking of the Met’s Victorian collection, all kept safe from stain, tear, and tarnish.  
  
“Hello?” he called. “Have you brought me here to speak with me?”  
  
No verbal answer came, but the Manse communicated in Senses and Seemings, when it cared to speak at all. These messages drifted into Thor’s mind as though from the air. The place was either ancient or timeless, and it was both a location and a hub and a character, although not a particularly aggressive one (or _interested_ in him—or the wants or opinions of most things). The Manse was an undisturbed annex from the primordial pit where darkness remained an undiluted and pure substance: sentient, palpable—almost solid.  
  
It was vast—vast and stocked with Treasures and Oddities and Silence. And countless spirits traversing or lingering indefinitely through the Manse on their ways to Anywhere. They were all similarly quiet, save the shrieking of the Wind that had once been a star-crossed lover, roving through the halls in an endless, doomed search redolent of a great loneliness unbroken. The Wind whipped by him and down the adjoining corridor, again finding no sweetheart same sickened by separation, again no one, again none. This spirit had Stayed here so long the Manse transfigured it into an element, given purpose and a home and a mystery; let it shriek out its solitary state here forever in a voice that must have once sounded sweet before its beloved ceased answering, before sorrow disfigured its cry.  
  
And—something queer about the shadows here—how they clustered, clung, and stuck to the edges of everything like sentient soot. As Thor moved, he felt them coalescing upon him too, a fantastical sensation landing bewilderingly between tangible and imagined, which no amount of wiping and brushing could shake. Distant cousins from the black flames populating the floorboards—these clustered mostly beneath the windows where the moonlight shone in. But once the light passed through the complex window panes, it coalesced into a liquid which collected and dripped down the sides of the furnishings. This liquid faded and faded, until the last weakened raydrops fell down into the coagulated dark below, and were eaten.  
  
A place for adventure! Thor grabbed an ancient key from the sideboard and held the eye of it to his own as he started his explorations. Chambers, corridors, apartments, and rooms, each replete with curiosities and baubles, heavy and ornate furnishings, overstuffed chairs with carved clawed feet and feral heads on the armrests. Burned velvet wallpaper, paintings encased in gilt frames, stained glass windows, gleaming silver pieces and candelabras. And the third variety of darkness, now becoming visible to him through the eye of his key: tall blue shadows, thronging more and more to whichever room he was in.  
  
They came and clustered, watchful, waiting, as Thor traversed and studied, prodded and poked at furnishing and oddment. He ignored them until they made him satisfied of their spectator intent; he reached out to touch and his hand moved through them. They seemed untroubled by this, but with each he made contact, he discerned a vague identity: stranger, stranger, vaguely familiar, and, occasionally, raw warmth with personal recognition! What friend was here? Who did he know who was dead? His memory was hazy, no memories came to mind. Perhaps he’d never known this one at all. He kept offering his hand to them, until one shadow of waist-height produced a protuberance from what was most likely its head, and licked him.  
  
A dog? Someone he pet-sat? He probed deeper—then he snatched his hand back. No. And _no thank you._  
  
A wild screech erupted from a chamber beyond—the Wind again.  
  
When he looked back, the room had changed! A straight hallway with two doorways at either end glaring at each other thorugh Thor. And one great window overlooking the single purple ribbon of road to the Manse. Lonesome, lovely.  
  
Suddenly there came a tapping, as of someone gently rapping, rapping on the nearer door.  
  
Another distant wail of the Wind on its winding turn about the place.  
  
Thor raised the key eye again as he approached the suspect door. The tall shadows had returned; they filled the corners and lined the hallway so thickly he could not see the walls behind them. An unseen grandfather clock ticked and tocked.  
  
They had all come, but for what?  
  
Another rap and rattle from the glaring door. His pulse picked up and his skin prickled as he reached forth his hand. A bleak foreboding gnawed at the back of his stomach. Another rapping—now some _visitors_ at the chamber door…  
  
Presently his soul grew stronger; hesitating then no longer, here he opened wide the door—  
  
Darkness there, and nothing more!  
  
Back into the hallway turning, all his soul within him burning, soon again he heard a tapping, one much louder than before! The grandfather clock chimed and thrilled him, filled him with fantastic yearning and terrors never felt before! The glooming denizens of the Manse’s Dark, of that watchful gaze turned ever inward, crowded hopefully forward, desolate yet all undaunted.  
  
His stomach dropped. He felt behind him for the door—nothing but a wall—but the corridor now halved in length! There the other door! The other door, angry and neglected, advanced upon him when he turned away. Now the rapping was a banging, a mean and awful clanging of the iron hinges on the door.  
  
“Your forgiveness I implore!” Thor whispered, feverish. “’twas the wind and nothing more!”  
  
But then the air grew denser—perfumed by some unseen censers, and thickened in his lungs, a vapor drugged. Now through blood and brain racing, this mental fog nudged him towards the door. Thus it resumed its friendly tapping, but the portents found him napping, as he flung the barrier open. **  
**  
There within stood an ornate pedestal encircled by five floating mirrors as for some indescribable treasure, but its velvet nest was empty. He drifted between the silvered glasses and fingered the depression in the fabric as some fell point of gravity drew his hand and mind towards this spot. The roving Wind raced somewhere nearby and screamed its unutterable longing for its missing part. **  
  
**He stepped with self-assured feet past the pedestal and over the threshold. And in the dark now clear as twilight to his Changed eyes, the multiplying villainies of night sprung up about him!—into the shadowy forms of twelve grooms upon twelve guards upon twelve gorgeous, gloaming maidens mourning their lost, fair Prince to his betrothed on this eve. ~~  
~~  
The ashen guards strutted with their silvery lances raised high, the bleak grooms befit Thor’s station, even his shadowy Lampade ladies wore all their finest embers! And Thor, the single glowing axis of this spectral constellation, his heart swelling full and buoyed ever higher on the rising tide of shimmering elation, was all unsurprised! He laughed so richly, so joyously, he could have shaken down the Castle! Now at last to join his Love with his friends all about him!  
  
Two of each shade took him by the arm, and the gloaming company escorted their Prince to his happy bridegroom. **  
**  
``  
  
That host was in the throes of it, Thor’s bliss burning the most brightly of all!—They clustered about him before the final Doorway, the terminal threshold with its last gauzy curtain like a wedding veil separating him and his Beloved.  
  
Thor trembled from an acute sense of vulnerability—so rare for him!—it was too perfect to bear, too sweet to be real! The gods must not tear away this precious dreamy fate, yet how he feared they might! The Lady Vanth beside him squeezed his hand in reassurance and his captain of the guards Charu pointed his oar-like lance towards the way they had come, indicating the fate of any who would dare oppose Thor’s dreams—for which Thor kissed her and gave him two gold coins for his fine service. Then his attendants loosed his hair from its bun, and each shade smoothed his locks down over his shoulders with hazy, insubstantial hands before guiding him through the barrier barring him from his terminal destination.  
  
Within, the Wind raced thickly beneath Thor’s palms one last time, the length of its disfiguring sentence having made it almost solid, rushing out from the distorted Darkness and back to its friend again, the only other living thing here, save the House.  
  
And Him.  
  
He who now so resplendently awaited Thor beneath the effaced and bloodless bust of lost Taygete, her beauty smashed and her forsaken neck over-long as she looked endlessly for her kin; she the tower from which They once fell and now stood alone together, upon their wedding night.  
  
A lonely night, a longing night; the peril of a hungry night.  
  
  
  
  
Thor’s feet were bare upon the chilly marble floor, but the rubies embroidered in his Beloved’s cravat glittered like a fresh blood spatter when He laughed. His fine frock coat, his fine home, on this eve of the Golden Age their union would bring the realm, exquisite.  
  
“By daily proof, you shall me find,” He called beauteously to him with an enchanting Romanian accent, “To be to you both loving, and kind.”  
  
Thor gave a great sigh, his smile and his serenity as broad as the horizon. **  
  
**His Beloved smirked. “Are you trying to choke me again with that smoke again?” He winked at Thor. “You brought out that book of Shakespeare’s plays in the middle of Idunn’s spring party. That boring, rich doll—I thought I might perish of ennui until you pulled me into the hedge maze—but then I realized your sentiment would be the culprit.”  
  
“And it never lost its novelty, since you’re still talking about it,” Thor teased back. He remembered it clearly now—what He had described. **  
  
**Laughing, Thor drew no closer than the nearest of the string quartet in the room—each man frozen in place with a rim of hoarfrost encasing he and his instrument while music yet streamed forth —and sighed again, just to watch his Beloved’s nose wrinkle like that once more. Thor wanted him; more than riches, more than fame, more than life, yet the enormity of the moment held him back. ~~  
~~  
His Betrothed drew just a little closer and toyed almost shyly with the fleur-de-lis embroidered upon the armchair. He gestured with his ornamental cane to the musicians. “Do you like it? They are all from the London Philharmonic!” He laughed toothily, very pleased with himself for his magic trick. “I asked them to play Amon Amarth’s _Twilight of the Thunder God_ , but it suited the ambience very ill.”  
  
_“You remembered,_ my favorite…” Thor’s eyelids fluttered and suddenly he was quite breathless; he recognized the name but could not recall any more than that, as though he faced a great wall, and the realization made his entire head feel like it was shuddering.  
  
Yet something was not right. He could only picture the party and Lady Idunn; he could _name_ everyone who had attended that spring romp but not… A great pressure rose between his temples, so swiftly he lost his breath; his knees trembled—he grasped a music stand for support until it passed. ~~  
~~  
“Of course I remembered, sweetling,” Beloved soothed. “Your dreams are plain in your eyes; I am only blind to them when you blink. I will make worlds to match those eyes.”  
  
The pleasure of simply looking at Him helped push away the tremulous disquiet growing up inside, but it could not eliminate it. This strange haze, like a thick fog rolling in, obscuring what lay before him. Yet Thor’s heart fluttered, he could just yield to Him right now.  
  
His fangs glittered beautifully between His pale, parted lips. Softly he swore, “By daily proof, you shall me find / To be to you both loving, and kind.”  
  
And it was sweet as divine joy. Divine favor, indeed, blew away the fog and Thor saw Him plainly—with a flash of primal dread—the identity of his Beloved—  
  
It was a _Vampire_ who advanced upon him—!  
  
Thor leaped back with a wild shout—a shock of adrenaline throbbed in every vein, making his stomach lurch and breathing a near impossibility. He knew now what had tried to hurl itself through the deceptive fog of joy—that sure calamity lay within his Beloved’s embrace! His legs were turning to lead as he stumbled backwards, his Betrothed alarmingly and yet deliciously keeping precisely in step with him. He ope’ed his arms to him, inviting, as he crooned to him—each sweet entreaty, no matter how simple, tugging heavily on the cord pulling Thor’s heart towards Him. _“Come,_ darling. _Come,_ beloved; I’ve not been touched since you departed… Come to coffin with me now. Sleep will knit this raveled sleeve of care and I shall make you a sweeter dream.”  
  
With a groan, Thor backed against the fireplace and braced himself upon the mantle, his body heavy, the world spinning and his head shuddering as the Vampire floated closer; even the act of blinking required focus and grit. The longing was too much for mortal to suffer when the Primal Imperative was screeching inside, like a stag, fleeing the tiger’s spring, bellowing out to his doe.  
  
“Sweetheart,” He whispered beautifully, “I know no rest without you…”  
  
His Beloved drew close enough to touch him: He reached out to stroke Thor’s cheek but Thor flinch back, even though he wanted so much to kiss each pale finger.  
  
_“Thor,”_ his Lover cried as though struck, “what is this? You are returned! End this awful separation at once!”  
  
With unutterable force of will, Thor almost reached the doorway.  
  
“My love, no!” His Beloved ran ahead and planted himself in Thor’s path. His voice shook with the emotion his regal composure just managed to contain: “For all that we are, _for all that we have ever been,_ one more chance!”  
  
The fog surged again, eclipsing the primal alarm clawing up his spine. Now unflinching, Thor gaped at Him as he strove to remember: _What sin had his beloved committed?_  
  
His Beloved pressed into his personal space, breathing his breath, pallid fingers covetously caressing his face. He was so beautiful and so winsomely sad. “Come to my coffin again, darling—stay? Say you’ll stay…”  
_  
_ Thor moaned, his fingers curling into fists as he held back, against the near gravitational pull of his perilous longing.  
  
“My love, you are my life!” the Vampire declared. “Whatever the cause of your doubt, I swear it is nothing!” _  
  
_He showered Thor in kisses so ardent, the like of which Thor had been dreaming of ever since they parted— _where had they met? On_ _a ship?_ There was an emptiness where the memory should be.  
_  
“I swear!_ It is _nothing!_ Come to coffin now, I shall make you sweeter dreams than this! Give up this poisonous nightmare and return to me!”  
  
Thor’s grip snapped! He gave in, his arms bracketing his Beloved at long last as he leaned in, _breathed_ him in for every contact was undiluted joy—buried his face in the long, black hair and closed his eyes against all but Him. His skin, his heart, his soul were all lushly rewarded: there was no earthly pleasure of the magnitude which now bled through Thor from skin to spine.  
  
He squeezed him until his muscles shook: no circumstance nor vengeful god could separate them again! Yet his blood ran cold.  
  
_“Do you want to wear it?”_ his Groom hissed into his ear.  
  
Thor became as silent as the Manse; even his heart quieted as though being squeezed of life as His pallid hands clasped his body fast.  
  
_“You may’st. It is a wedding gift; it is our wedding night!”  
_  
``  
  
His twining embrace both tender and inexorable, the Vampire clasped Thor to his chest with the icy grace of an automaton in his sole true operation. His arms fluidly opened to Thor as though with longing, and embraced him as if with passion, while his cruel eyes had all the seeming of a Demon’s that is dreaming: impenetrable, unreachable, intractable—monstrous.  
  
Thor looked upon his winsome murderer, at his expression’s intimacy so insufficient to conceal the predatory—the last, starving drops of blood He had left all rushing to his cheeks and lips as though so eager to meet Thor’s! His gentle lips would be the loving crush to hide the terminal thrust, and each atom of Thor’s body thrilled to the knowledge, that he was about to die.  
  
The Vampire lowered his lips to Thor’s chest.  
  
_I shall be a park and thou shalt be my deer—  
  
_Thor’s eyelids fluttered; that tender mouth crept forward, then over muscle, now over collarbone. _  
  
Graze where thou wilt, in mountain or in dale—_  
  
Thor grasped the back of His neck, urging Him pause. “Loki,” he mumbled almost senselessly the random name that came to him through the fog. “My skin—I—I am dissolving—what am I—?”  
  
The room froze, sound ceased—all of the Vampire stilled with His lips parted over Thor’s pulse.  
  
_“You know,”_ He murmured with an accent thickened by lust, “this is not _all_ I can do…with your skin…”  
  
~  
  
Thor woke with a start—he was a bleary, blissed out mess and he was only cursorily aware that was still in his apartment—and that his hands were already around his cock and fingering himself open and he was very, _very_ close. All of his skin was primed for pleasure, as though someone had spent hours single-mindedly chasing, romancing, seducing, and teasing him.  
  
He fell back against the pillows with a loud whimper as he tried to force it back, to hold on to this peak for just a moment longer, but his self-control held for exactly half a second.  
  
  
  
  
  
  


  
  


**Author's Note:**

> James Earl Jones’s recitation of Poe’s The Raven (well, the version aired on The Simpsons) is like porn to me especially from [4:13](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bLiXjaPqSyY&list=PL9_V9OfOoG-MFhcVu7oZvC_roo1ofd8w3&index=25) on! And his eyes have all the seeming of a Demon’s that is dreaming. <3
> 
> That "wet look" remark by Loki is credit to Not a Wolf! on FB and Twitter <3


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